British National Lottery probability compared to hours in a lifetime

Hi,

Almost 10 years ago I wrote a post comparing the probability of winning the National Lottery to the number of hours in a lifetime. I've now re-done the calculations to get up-to-date with the changes to the National Lottery and British life expectancy.

The purpose is to show how incredibly unlikely it is to win the lottery by using a comparison between the probability of winning and the number of hours in a lifetime. Quite effective I think at spoiling the idea of 'It Could be You' (their advertising slogan) or at least putting how unlikely it is to be you into perspective.

Could forum members check my methodology please - many thanks. [Note: the arithmetic has been triple checked.]

Probability of winning the Lotto jackpot:

The flagship game in the British National Lottery is the Lotto game which has two draws per week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Players choose 6 numbers in the range from 1 to 59 (increased from 49 in 2015) and matching all 6 of them wins the Lotto jackpot (or an equal share if more than one winning ticket).

Playing twice a week (the draw on Wednesdays and Saturdays) you would have to live to be about 1,988,338 years old to have a 99% probability of winning at least once. That's about 24,532 lifetimes of 81 years.